Hacker News Reader

Comment by voidUpdate | Hacker News Reader

> "the resulting congestion required law enforcement to manually manage intersections"

Does anyone know if a Waymo vehicle will actually respond to a LEO giving directions at a dark intersection, or if it will just disregard them in favour of treating it as a 4 way stop?

View on HN

I suddenly find that I really want an answer to this as well because I'm now imagining what might ensue if one of these attempted to board a car ferry. Typically there's a sign "turn headlights off", you're expected to maintain something like 5 mph (the flow of traffic should never stop), and you get directed by a human to cross multiple lane markings often deviating from the path that the vehicle immediately in front of you took.

Car ferries don't really make much sense in a Waymo-ubiquitous world. It's not your vehicle; there isn't really a reason why you would need to have the same vehicle on the other side of ferry ride. You're better off having one Waymo network on one side of the waterway, a separate Waymo network on the other side, and then a passenger-only ferry with a much higher passenger capacity (and oftentimes, they go much faster, since you can have hull forms like wave-piercing catamarans, hydrofoils, and hovercraft when you aren't carrying cars).

There are some places where a car ferry is essentially a bridge and just operate as part of the highway, e.g. there are two such instances in sacramento: https://dot.ca.gov/caltrans-near-me/district-4/d4-projects/d... The rides are about a minute long and you very much wouldn't want to change vehicles.

Another common scenario is vastly different population density on the far side of the ferry route. It seems unlikely to me that autonomous vehicle companies would want to maintain a giant seasonal fleet at such destinations.

In a lot of cases rather than seasonal it will be a surge every weekend.

I think that Waymo isn't concerned about those types of scenario because they only operate in a limited area, and can tune their systems to operate best in that area (EG not worrying about car ferries, human-operated parking lots etc)

Right. People still imagine that Level 5 is going to happen, and it is at best a long way off. You're talking full AI at some point.

Your scenario seems to have a lot of overlap with a construction worker directing traffic around a road construction site. I have no idea if Waymo is any good at navigating these, but I am sure there is a lot of model training around these scenarios because they are common in urban driving environments.

Don't they just have a stop/go board? Whereas an LEO at a crossing would have to use hand signals

Sometimes, but not always. They may need to stop traffic for a moment to get some machine out and then there is no board. Sometimes they will tell you an alternate that is much faster than waiting as well.

This was found to be one of the early challenges of self driving: reading traffic signal gestures of traffic agents. It does it. But the jury is out if it does it well.

It also needs to be able to ensure the signals are coming from a human that actually has authority to command it. Don't really want it taking hand signals from anyone.

It's hard for humans as well.

I often see humans drivers being confused with the police officers gesturing more and more until the person figures it out.

Why do people keep saying this whole "it's hard for humans, too" thing in every damn self driving car thread? Is it some kind of excuse to let the self driving car be shit at it? I don't care if people are shit at it, isn't the whole point that these cars will be safer than people?

Yeah we know people suck at driving. What situation is there that people don't suck at? People suck at 4 way stops. People suck at merging onto the freeway. People can't even exit the freeway without causing a mess. People can't even drive in a straight goddamn line without varying speed by 10mph and weaving all over the road. What exactly are we trying to say here?

I think he’s trying to say “It is almost impossible to address this issue”. I don’t disagree.

I've been confused myself.

I remember being in a construction area where they had temporary traffic lights, PLUS a flagman directing traffic against the red lights. sigh.

The amount of times this has been asked with no confirmation leads me to believe they still do not.

Tesla fanboys gush about how FSD can understand LEO at irregular traffic conditions, but no company I’m aware of has confirmed their systems are capable.

> The amount of times this has been asked with no confirmation leads me to believe they still do not.

They do follow hand signals from police. There are many videos documenting the behaviour. Here is one from waymo: https://waymo.com/blog/2024/03/scaling-waymo-one-safely-acro...

Look for the embed next to the text saying “The Waymo Driver recently interpreting a police officer’s hand signals in a Los Angeles intersection.”

Or here is a video observing the behaviour in the wild: https://youtu.be/3Qk_QhG5whw?si=GCBBNJqB22GRvxk1

Do you want confirmation about something more specific?

Thanks for sharing! Happy to see progress here and an actual statement from a company vs normies arguing they are capable or not..

Is there confirm that it’s not remotely controlled at this point?

That's between Waymo and their investors at this point. They claim it's not, but it's not there's any way for them to actually prove they aren't, like the moon landing.

FSD on the other hand works fine without sleight of hand techniques, since I’ve taken it up to rural Maine without any cellular connectivity and it worked great, even in irregular rural traffic situations.

I very much doubt they would refer to that as “the Waymo Driver interpreting” the hand signals.

Teslas currently have a driver in the front who could take over in these situations.

Waymo said they normally handle traffic light outages as 4-way stops, but sometimes call home for help - perhaps if they detect someone in the intersection directing traffic ?

Makes you wonder in general how these cars are designed to handle police directing traffic.

It kind of makes sense. Why program or train on such a rare occurrence. Just send it off to a human to interpret and be done with it. If that's the case then Tesla is closer to Waymo then previously thought. Maybe even ahead.

I don't think traffic light outages (e.g. flashing yellow) or police directing traffic at intersections is that rare, but regardless these cars do need to handle it in a safe and legal manner, which either means recognizing police gestures in a reliable way, or phoning home.

We know that Waymos phone home when needed, but not sure how Tesla handles these situations. I'm not sure how you conclude anything about Tesla based on their current temporary "safety monitor" humans in the cars - this is just a temporary measure until they get approval to go autonomous.

I seem to remember as a kid that cops would be directing traffic often if a signal was out or malfunctioning. I haven't seen that in years. The only time I see anyone directing traffic is around accidents, construction zones, or special events.

I can conclude based on using FSD every single day. I've hit issues just like this, as well as police directing. And it's completely fine.

Googling for this, apparently Tesla do try to recognize police gestures, and are getting better at it.

I wonder who gets the ticket when a driverless car does break the law and get stopped by police? If it's a Taxi service (maybe without a passenger in the car) then maybe it'd the service, but that's a bit different than issuing a traffic ticket to a driver (where there's points as well as a fine).

What if it's a privately owner car - would the ticket go to the car owner, or to the company that built the car ?!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com